OS X Imagesetter LineScreen Issue

[Tuck007]

Here's a new one for us Imagesetter people. Using OS 10.2.8, Quark 6, and my Agfa SelectSet 800, I can not print at 160 lpi. I can print up to 150 lpi just fine. The job is for a Web Offset and they require film at 160 lpi. In quark, the LPI is set to 160 using the Agfa SelectSet 800-A PPD that I got from Adobe (See other forum threads). When the Rip begins, it shows Actual Screen: [133 45 RNB ABS] under the Viper-Log window. Going to attempt to print out of Quark 5 in Classic to get the job out. Anyone got any ideas?

.:TUCK:.

 

[signal49]

I use an ABDick Imagesetter and I know that even in previous versions of Quark, the setting from the imagesetter would override any lpi setting I entered in Quark. If I want to increase the lpi, I have to change it in the imagesetter. Not sure if it's just our setup or if this is standard...

 

[Tuck007]

In OS 9, using Quark 5, we can enter any LIP we like up to the max that the imagesetter can handle. Our 800 can run upto 200 lpi. The 7000 up to 300 lpi. In OS X, we have found that entering anything over 150, the imagesetter will run at it's defualt linescreen, 133. We can run Quark 5 in Classic Enviroment and get past that, but it seems counter productive.

.:TUCK:.

 

[signal49]

Wish I could help... Sounds like it's my own setting somewhere in the imagesetter that keeps my Quark from defining LPI.

I can tell you, though, that I've had other weird, random problems printing to other devices in my shop from Quark 6. And, like you, if I open the same file in Quark 5, they print the way they should. One example is, I have to go to Page Setup last and pick the printer and page size in order to print multiple copies of a doc. If I don't do Page Setup as the very last step, it only prints 1 copy. Another problem is colored text typeset in Quark prints in different shades. If we have 8 up, for instance, the same letters in the same position in all 8 ups will print incorrectly, but it's not necessarily all occurrences of a particular character. But if I save the file down and open in v5, it prints correctly. I have some people researching it, but no luck yet.

So, long story short, I think Quark 6 in OSX just has some odd problems with printing. Maybe Panther would take care of it? Maybe not... I don't really want to spend the money on it to find out it doesn't help. Hopefully Quark will put out a patch. Again, wish I could help solve your problem, but it unfortunately may be that there is no solution right now. Argh.

 

[Tuck007]

We have found that if you don't go into the Printer... Setup window everytime, that things get screwy.

I believe there is a Quark 6 Patch. When I visited the Quark booth at Seybold in SF this year, they told us that they were running Quark 6.1 and the patch would be availible. I have not gone to look, but it feels like Quark 6 is still too new to be reliable.
If you up to the Adobe CS package, watch Illustrator CS like a hawk! It does some very strange things with fonts. Overall, I like CS a lot! InDesign CS is much better and it looks like Adobe has totally phased out PageMaker.

.:TUCK:.